D/S: Pascal Laugier. P: Richard Grandpierre, Simon Trottier. Cast: Morjana Alaoui, Mylène Jampanoï, Catherine Bégin. UK dist (DVD): Studio Canal.

Empty and depressing torture porn à la française: think Hostel with pretensions to significance. A young girl, kidnapped and abused by anonymous abductors, manages to escape but is tormented by visions of a twisted and deformed she-beast that repeatedly slashes her arms and body with a straight razor; the kidnappers are never found. Fifteen years later, the girl suddenly turns up at the doorstep of a nice bourgeois family – and proceeds to blow them all apart with a shotgun. Initially sceptical of the girl’s hysterical claims that the husband and wife were the torturers she evaded all those years ago, her unrequited lesbian lover (and reluctant accomplice in her quest for closure) realises they have stumbled onto a sinister conspiracy when she discovers an underground high-tech torture chamber hidden beneath the family home…

An initially intriguing premise quickly deteriorates into another cheerless and interminable depiction of a young woman being systematically beaten, abused and mutilated in a chic stainless-steel dungeon, all (apparently) in the “scientific” cause of creating a genuine martyr capable of transcending this veil of appearances, and experiencing a glimpse of the hereafter. It’s vile, tedious and wholly meretricious. The fact that it’s also technically well-made, even slick, only makes the experience all the more poisonous. The expected nasty, closeup gore effects (culminating in a literal femme écorchée) abound; nothing as ridiculous as Hostel’s eyeball scene, mind you, though that’s hardly a ringing endorsement. Beyond sadomasochists, and budding serial killers in need of inspiration, it’s hard to imagine anyone finding much entertainment here. A warning to the curious: Martyrs will seriously ruin your day. And not in a good way.